Page 97 of Strange Lights

I shake my head, trying to clear my mind.

“Nothing was taken from you! You’re always attempting magic you have no business doing. Controlling people, raising the dead, destroying an alien race. You’ve completely lost it; you aren’t making sense at all.”

“Take this, make it a gateway. And with every one of those creatures”⁠—she gestures toward the row of cages⁠—“that I kill, I’ll open a doorway for our family to return.”

“I’m not killing anyone, least of all children,” I say.

“I’ll tell you everything. I won’t hurt you. You’ll choose the path yourself. You came back because you can sense it’s the right thing to do. Take this.” She extends the sword, hilt side toward me. “Take this and listen. Then you’ll understand why. You’ll understand what I’m doing. Your soul, your magic, a gateway. I know the cost is high. But for countless other lives in exchange, how can you say no? I tried to find another way; I tried to love you, to save you. But I need this.”

Hear us, hear us.

She is wide eyed and fragile, begging me to listen. This is my mother as I have never known her before, and it stops me in my tracks. I shouldn’t. I should stop her right now. All I need to do is get close enough to grab ahold of her and I could finish this. But nothing is adding up. My soul. A magical gateway. A sword to destroy an entire alien race? To what end? For what reason?

Listen.

I take the sword carefully, and I see something in Adele’s eyes that terrifies me: hope. Surrounded by fragments of meteorite⁠—the last remnants of a long-dead planet that crashed here by chance⁠—I stop and listen. Standing on the scorched-earth evidence of her failed experiments, Adele explains everything. Answers all my questions. Puzzle upended, the missing pieces drop into my outstretched hands. I listen as she tells me a terrible story. I listen as my mother explains to me exactly why I would make this weapon for her.

41

Unmasked

I am reeling, immersed in the knowledge of exactly who I am, what I am, when they burst through the still-swinging door. It’s instinct to raise the sword as I turn. Self-defense. I feel as if the foundation I’ve built my moral ground on has cracked. All the truths I’ve taken for granted are whisked away with a larger one, replaced with uncertainty and a single cold hard fact. I thought the worst was over. But it’s yet to come. I want to run, hide, disappear. Unconsciously, almost, I crack that door in my mind, let the magic gather.

“Reggie!”

Calvin, Luca, Eldi. They are all here. Zara, Meredith. Orion. My family.

But no. I am alone. I am unique. Different. I am unnatural, a monster, wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Voices in my head and my own thoughts, a confusing jumble I can’t separate, can’t pry one from the other. I finally understand what I’m hearing.

“What⁠—” Calvin says. He steps forward, and Adele raises her gauntleted hand.

“Stop,” I snap. Energy is swirling in my head, growing, rising into a screaming storm. The door cracking open farther. Clouds roll in, Mother Nature greeting the energy I unleash with her own. Rain spatters the ground as the sky darkens, and the wind pelts the skin of my face with sharp sand.

“Reggie⁠—” Calvin says, eyes wide in alarm as I back away from them all, toward that open cliff, sword still raised. Everything I’ve ever known is a lie. My life, my very self, is a lie. I’m not Reggie. Clone. Just Adele’s creation. I’m a bit of duplicate code in a stolen body, a weapon, a tool. A fragment of soul. I’m an alien creature in someone else’s skin. How can I trust my own thoughts, my own feelings?

Luca’s eyes are on me as he throws an arm across Calvin’s chest, pressing him back. “Careful, now,” he says, and I’m not sure whom he’s talking to, whom he’s protecting.

“There’s little time left. They’ll be here soon, Regina. We must hurry.” My mother’s voice, calm and tender in that rare way that I always yearned for. It prods at one of the gaping wounds inside my mind.

“Stop!” I scream at her, momentarily losing control. Magic flares with a bright burst of sound and light and wind⁠—my mother’s lightning wielded by my hands. Someone shrieks. The cages rattle, and the children cower. I pull it back, struggle to regain control. I grasp blindly for the handle of the door inside my mind, the storm on the other side raging and howling, rattling the foundation I’m clinging to. I can’t tell anymore where my magic ends, how much of this storm stems from my mother and how much is simply the weather.

Instinctually I reach out, tether, latch onto the closest familiar thing. A hand thrown out to brace for a fall. My mother. I sense her shock as my tether wraps around her, no longer carefully hidden. She doesn’t throw me off like I expected. Instead, she leans into it. Lightning, a storm like I’ve never witnessed before, rages as she tries to tether herself to me. She grasps for me, desperately tries to cling to my soul, senseless, like a drowning victim pulls a rescuer under. Her grip pulls me stumbling forward toward the edge of the void, completely out of control now. My hair stands on end as electricity ripples through the air; torrential sheets of rain blow in a blinding wind, threatening to push me closer to the physical edge too.

Then I feel a snag, a yank, someone pulling me back. Zara and Meredith. Zara a mental tether holding onto me, stopping my slide, Meredith a physical anchor, bodily tugging me away from the drop-off.

Adele’s face twists with a vicious snarl, and she lifts her Gauntlet. I brace myself to fight, but before I can, Calvin’s there, gripping her arm. Metal warps and shrieks. He can’t destroy it, can’t even take it from her, but somehow, he’s holding her. Trapped, she thrashes and tries to free herself while Calvin grits his teeth and holds on.

I’m trying to pull myself back, break my connection to the lightning, to Adele. The storm is no longer growing, but it isn’t shrinking. Then I feel the tendrils of more tethers. Calvin first, steady and strong, then Luca crashes into me all at once. I pull myself away, back from the edge. Back to safety, my family. But I drag Adele with me.

With an eerie crack, chunks of rock come loose around us as Adele throws lightning without restraint. Orion huddles over Eldi, near the cages, relatively shielded.

“Get back!” I shout at my sisters.

Zara shoves Meredith out of the way, a boulder missing her head by inches. But Calvin stands with Adele, inches from the drop, refusing to let go of the Gauntlet, pinning her in place. I can sense what’s going to happen a moment before it does. The taste of electricity on my tongue, an explosive crash, and part of the cliffside gives way, slides inexorably down, Calvin and Adele in its path.

I already know I will be too late; there’s nothing I can do to reach Calvin in time as he drops Adele’s hand, reaches out for me instead. But Luca is closer. He darts forward, grabs the hand Calvin outstretches toward me. Luca flinches as the wall of rock tumbles toward us, throws up an arm like a shield. Every drop of moisture in the air evaporates, then coalesces like a bubble above us, and despite the battle raging inside me, I am in awe at the sight of Luca using his water magic to this degree. I yank back the last of my tether, ripping free of Adele. The storm flickers and dies like a shattered light bulb. When the last of the rockslide clatters off Luca’s shield, the remaining water falls like rain as Luca’s knees give out and he slumps, Calvin catching him halfway down. Adele raises her hand again.

“Stop,” I say, pushing myself in between them, my back to my mother, to the wide-open sky, the sword still in my hand. “Stop!”